Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and the second son of the Queen of Britain, who was involved in scandals with the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, is subject to scrutiny, especially his legacy, which is still ambiguous, as he held three meetings with Gaddafi and enjoyed a long-term friendship.
Royal finance expert David McClure said Andrew’s private fortune remains a mystery 15 to 20 years after he was asked questions about his lifestyle and it’s clear he’s been taking money elsewhere for decades. McClure noted that Andrew has served as a “key” to foreign banks in a number of countries around the world for years.
He visited a number of countries, including Libya, and in 2005 he became acquainted for the first time with arms smuggler Tarek Kaituni. Kaituni spent several years in pretrial detention in a Paris prison for weapons smuggling before being given a two-month suspended prison sentence and a 10,000 dollars fine a year later. Andrew spent a four-day vacation in Tunisia with Kaitouni in November 2008, shortly before Colonel Gaddafi’s visit in Tripoli.
Before Andrew lost his commercial role, Kaitouni was invited to Princess Beatrice’s 21st birthday party in Spain in August 2009, where he presented her with a £18,000 diamond necklace. Andrew’s relations with Libya are also deepening, and in July 2007 he attended a lavish party hosted by an unnamed Libyan businessman in the French resort of Saint Tropez, where he was photographed with American businessman Chris von Aspen.
He received Saif Gaddafi in Tunisia in the summer of 2008 at the invitation of the son-in-law of former Tunisian President Sakhr El Materi, who fled to the Seychelles after the Tunisian revolution and was later convicted of corruption in absentia by a court in his country. The Duke of York returned to Libya in early 2009, while a Buckingham Palace spokesman said at the time that Andrew was there to advance British interests, but he faced criticism due to his proximity to the Gaddafi family and arms dealers.
Adapted from The Sun Newspaper